1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information encoding apparatus and method, an information retrieval apparatus and method, an information retrieval system and method, and a program. More specifically, the present invention relates to an information encoding apparatus and method, an information retrieval apparatus and method, an information retrieval system and method, and a program in which the amount of computation can be reduced to enable quick retrieval.
2. Description of the Related Art
With increased network bandwidth or increased storage capacity, techniques for efficiently organizing information, especially, image information, have been demanded.
For example, a technique in which tags are added to individual images and are retrieved has been proposed. However, the processing load involved in adding tags to a great number of images one by one is large to cause difficulty in quickly establishing a database.
A technique for detecting a feature value of an image to perform retrieval based on the feature value of the image has also been proposed.
For example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-62964, image data recorded as a Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) file is read and decompressed to obtain chromaticity information and luminance information for each block of eight by eight pixels in the decompression process, and it is determined whether or not the obtained chromaticity information or luminance information is within a range that meets the definition of an image to be retrieved. Thus, an image is retrieved.